Saturday, October 14, 2017

The signs that Donald Trump planned to allow Israel to largely call the shots on U.S. foreign policy have been evident since he named ultra-Zionist New York bankruptcy attorney David Friedman, formerly with the Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman law firm, as his ambassador to Israel and son-in-law Jared Kushner as his "special advisor on Middle East peace." Israel's control over Trump's foreign policy, especially on Middle East issues, has manifested itself in several ways.

Friedman altered long-standing U.S. Middle Eastern policy by stating to an Israeli audience that "they [the Israelis] are only occupying 2 percent of the West Bank," adding that, “settlements there are part of the Jewish state proper." Since invading the West Bank in 1967, Israel has taken over 42 percent of Palestinian land, a violation of 27 United Nations Security Council resolutions. Although Trump vowed to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the mere call for such action is a violation of UN General Assembly resolution 181, which calls for Jerusalem to be a "corpus separatum," an international city governed under the auspices of the UN. Israel cites ancient mythological Jewish texts, not recognizable under international law, as the basis for its occupation of east Jerusalem and West Bank territories.

In a span of two days, Trump carried out two act that were not in America’s interest but had been pushed by Netanyahu. These were the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), because Trump viewed it as overly anti-Israeli, and Trump’s official decertification of the P5+1’s (United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, and Germany) Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program. Netanyahu was brimming with joy at the decertification of the JCPOA and followed Trump's action on UNESCO by withdrawing Israel from the organization.

On a visit to Ramallah in May, Trump reportedly screamed at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting attended by U.S. and Palestinian officials. Trump accused Abbas of lying to him during a previous meeting at the White House. Trump yelled at Abbas, "You tricked me in DC! You talked there about your commitment to peace, but the Israelis showed me your involvement in incitement [against Israel]." The Israelis know they have Trump in their hip pocket. Trump's support for the Saudi-led sanctions against Qatar were not only supported by Israel but the entire underpinning for the sanctions -- a false Qatar News Agency report of Qatar's emir criticizing the Saudis to the Iranians -- was fabricated in a hacking operation of the agency's computer network in Doha. The hacking of the news agency and placement of a fake news story was designed by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi -- an Israeli lackey and business partner of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's brother, Blackwater founder Erik Prince -- and the Israeli influence-peddling organization in Washington, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Several of Trump's foreign-born business partners and real estate investors who are now being scrutinized by Justice Department counsel Robert Mueller are active in criminal syndicates in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, and Poland. These business partners are also strong promoters of Israel and lead several Zionist organizations in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and central Asia. One of these partners, Beny Steinmetz, the Israeli diamond, mining, and real estate magnate, is under criminal indictment in Israel for money laundering and bribery.

Among Trump's top political campaign donors are such Zionist supporters of Israel as casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, who backs Netanyahu's government, and Paul Singer, the Wall Street hedge fund vulture who preys on faltering economies like those of Puerto Rico, Argentina, and countries in Africa.

Encouraging Trump's rabidly pro-Zionist and pro-Israel agenda is, ironically, the alt-right. The person who coined the alt-right phrase, neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer, considers himself a "white Zionist," even though he uses Nazi-like "Heil Trump" salutes at his white supremacist gatherings. Spencer's longtime friend, Stephen Miller, an outspoken Jewish Zionist, ensures that Trump uses white nationalist "dog whistle" phrases and jargon in his speeches. Former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon, who has returned to Breitbart News, is also known to support Zionist causes even though his ex-wife said he didn't want their children going to certain schools because there were too many Jewish students in attendance.

Netanyahu is more than comfortable with Trump's ties to neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. The Israeli Prime Minister refrained from criticizing Trump's comment that there were "fine people" marching in the neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan parade in Charlottesville, Virginia. Netanyahu has made common cause with various far-right and formerly neo-Nazi political parties in Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Poland. Netanyahu has actually broken with Jewish groups that have publicly condemned the events in Charlottesville and Spencer's organization.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is known to be fuming over the ardently pro-Israeli activities of Kushner, Friedman, and U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. Although Friedman and Haley report to Tillerson, both diplomats appear to have another chain-of-command, one that leads directly to Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump, a convert to Orthodox Judaism, in the West Wing.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

WMR has submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FBI requesting any documents on FBI surveillance of Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, from 1927, the year he was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens, New York, to 1993, the year he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Donald Trump has denied his father was arrested at a Klan rally in 1927, even though the incident was reported by June 1, 1927 edition of The New York Times. Fred Trump was 21 at the time. The KKK was allied closely to several Nazi organizations in the United States, including the German American Bund and Silver Legion.

Later, as war clouds gathered over U.S.-German relations, Fred Trump insisted that the Trump family was Swedish, not German. In fact, Fred Trump's father and mother were German nationals who immigrated to the United States from Kallstadt, in the then-Kingdom of Bavaria. The Trumps wanted to cover up their German heritage, something they had in common with other Nazi agents in the United States. The Nazi Duquesne spy ring relied on the honey trap Lilly Stein, an Austrian Jew who immigrated to New York with the help of U.S. Vice Consul in Vienna Ogden H. Hammond, Jr. Stein, who covered up her Jewish ancestry, penetrated some of the highest and most well-connected social circles in the city.

The same year Fred Trump was arrested at a Klan rally in Queens, German immigrant Hermann Lang arrived in New York. Lang, a draftsman for the Carl L. Norden Corporation at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was recruited by the Abwehr in 1939. Lang passed the top secret blueprints for the Norden bomb sight to the Nazis. In 1938, the Luftwaffe began using a bomb sight similar in design to Norden's.

The elder Trump, who was born in The Bronx in 1905 to his German immigrant father and mother, fit the profile of several right-wing German immigrant offspring in the New York area who were recruited as agents for Nazi Germany. The FBI files may be rather sparse on Nazi spies since its director, J. Edgar Hoover, considered the surveillance of Soviet agents to be a higher priority for the FBI until after the U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941.

German military intelligence, the Abwehr, and Nazi state security, the Gestapo, placed a premium on recruiting German-American citizens into clandestine service in the 1930s and early 40s. Fred Trump's affiliation with the KKK would have made him a prime recruitment target for the Abwehr and Gestapo stations in New York City.

WMR has requested from the FBI any files that would link the elder Trump to the German American Bund, a group of German-American Nazis active in the New York and New Jersey area in the 1930s, as well as other Nazi organizations. Also of interest is Fred Trump's wartime building construction work at major U.S. Navy ports used for the embarkation of U.S. troops to Europe. Fred Trump’s bidding on Navy contracts to build housing and other units in Chester, Pennsylvania and Norfolk and Newport News,Virginia are suspicious given Trump’s past activities with Nazi-affiliated groups. Newport News was the location of Newport News Shipbuilding Company and the C&O Pier, where many U.S. troops embarked for Europe and a number of German prisoners-of-war were disembarked for internment camps. [At left, HMS Mauretania in September 1942, embarking U.S. and Canadian troops for Europe].

One Nazi agent, Waldemar Othmer, a naturalized American citizen who came to America in 1919, took jobs at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, close to Fred Trump's rental apartments, and at Camp Pendleton in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Virginia Beach was one of the planned German landing sites in the event of a German military invasion of the United States. Othmer used his presence at the bases to track the entrances and exits of British and American warships, troop transports, convoys, and merchant ships. [Photo at left: German U-Boat survivors of a U.S. Coast Guard attack in the Chesapeake Bay]. Othmer used invisible ink to send coded messages to his Nazi intelligence handlers. In 1942, Othmer was transferred by the U.S. Army to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he had a perch close to the atomic bomb development work at nearby Oak Ridge.

Dr. Ignatz Griebl, who immigrated to Manhattan's Yorkville neighborhood in 1925, became both a Nazi spy handler and an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. Griebl handled Nazi agents in Norfolk, Baltimore, and Boston, including those conducting surveillance on Navy operations at the ports. One of Griebl's agents was Gustav Guellich, who immigrated in 1932 and landed a job as a metallurgist at the Federal Shipbuilding Company in Kearney, New Jersey. Recruited as a Nazi spy in 1935, Guellich was able to collect documents on new U.S. Navy guns and shells, destroyer blueprints, and samples of cables deployed on Navy ships. Also coming into Guellich's hands was top secret information on the rocket research being conducted by Dr. Robert H. Goddard at his laboratory in Roswell, New Mexico.There is every indication that Fred Trump held his far-right views during the war. He adamantly refused to rent to African Americans, even though many of them worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and other nearby military bases and were in need of housing. When the draft was imposed in 1940, Fred Trump, who was 35, was subject to conscription but was never drafted. In 1942, Trump's age and dependent children would have put him in a lower priority category for the draft. Yet, Fred Trump did not serve in any draft-exempt occupational areas such as war production or public health and safety. He built housing for the Navy but it was under contract and Trump was paid well by the government. After the war, Fred Trump built homes for veterans and low-wage earners but was soon hauled into court for bilking the government, including the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. [Left: list of World War II shipyards. Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock in Chester, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock, and "others" were wartime construction sites for E. Trump & Son Company].

Fred Trump's history during the 1930s and war years is replete with gaps, which is always an indication that someone's biography is being altered or manipulated. Hopefully, FBI records may help shed some light on Fred Trump's highly suspicious past.

The following is the FOIA letter sent to the FBI for all records on Fred C. Trump:

This letter constitutes an expedited request under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552, and is submitted on behalf of Wayne Madsen Report (WMR).

We request copies of all records generated between January 1, 1927 and December 31, 1993, concerning Frederick Christ Trump of Jamaica Estates, Borough of Queens, New York. Mr. Trump died on June 25, 1999, as reported by The New York Times on June 26, 1999.

For purposes of fee assessments, we request that WMR be placed in the category of “news media” requester. WMR publishes daily news articles of a public interest on an international web site, issues special on-line reports, and is used as a primary news source by broadcasters, newspapers, magazines, and news websites around the world.

We note that the National Security Agency, Department of the Navy, U.S. Department of State, and the Defense Intelligence Agency have previously recognized that WMR qualifies for “news media” status. We also request a waiver of all applicable duplication fees, as release of this information will contribute significantly to the public’s understanding of the activities and operations of government.

As the FOIA requires, I will look forward to your response within twenty (20) working days.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo was surprisingly open to the press about where his initial investigation was leading in the wake of alleged gunman Stephen Paddock's massacre of 58 people and wounding of some 489 others gathered at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas on October 1. At a press conference on October 4, Lombardo held out the possibility that Paddock may have had assistance in carrying out his deadly massacre from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino on the Las Vegas strip.

Lombardo said, "Do you think this was all accomplished on his own? . . . Self value, face value, you got to make the assumption that he had to have had some help at some point. And we want to ensure that that's the answer. Maybe he's a super guy ... [he] was working out all of this on his own. But it'd be hard for me to believe that."

Lombardo also revealed that Paddock booked an AirBnB room at the Ogden condominium in Las Vegas the prior weekend. That room overlooked another concert venue, the Life Is Beautiful music festival. Other factoids offered by Lombardo included the fact that Paddock, while firing his weapons, stood back from the hotel's smashed-out windows to protect himself from return police sniper fire. Lombardo later revealed that a note with a list of numbers was found in one of the two adjoining suites comped to Paddock by the Mandalay because of his high-roller gambler status. The sheriff's office was also the apparent source for a report that someone with a room key card and who was not hotel staff entered Paddock's suite while he was away from the hotel.

Lombardo's willingness to be open with the public hearkens back to the "Sagebrush Rebellion" of the 1980s, when elected sheriffs in the Rocky Mountain West demonstrated their fierce independence from dictates out of Washington. The more information Lombardo offered the press, the more Las Vegas FBI special agent-in-charge (SAC) Aaron Rouse pushed back against Lombardo's revelations. The conflict between Western sheriffs and the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies are ingrained in federal-state relations extending from Arizona through Nevada and into the upper Rockies.

Lombardo, a Republican, was elected sheriff of Clark County in 2014. Lombardo spent 30 years as a Las Vegas police officer prior to being elected sheriff. His office also places him in charge of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Department. While Lombardo has police authority within the city limits of Las Vegas, the famed "Strip" lies outside the city limits but Lombardo still has ultimate police authority over the casino region as the sheriff of Clark County.

It was noteworthy that Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman pushed back against Lombardo's statement that Paddock may have had help. Goodman brushed off additional parties being involved in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. She insisted that the word "may" was key and reiterated the investigation remained inconclusive, despite the earlier comments by Lombardo. Ms. Goodman succeeded her husband Oscar Goodman as mayor seven years ago.

Oscar Goodman, who owns a steakhouse in Las Vegas, is a former Philadelphia lawyer for mobsters like Nicky Scarfo and Phil Leonetti. While practicing law in Las Vegas, Goodman represented other mobsters, including Meyer Lansky, Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein, and Stardust "skim" boss Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. Now an independent, Oscar Goodman ran for mayor in 1998 as a Democrat. Carolyn Goodman declined to endorse either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Some local Las Vegas journalists regard the Goodmans as part of the mob scene in Las Vegas. Oscar Goodman pushed hard for U.S. Congressional approval and budget earmarking for Las Vegas's Mob Museum, located in the old U.S. Post Office Building and which honors the mob's contributions to the founding of Las Vegas.

FBI agent Rouse only offered up the fact that the FBI's investigation of the mass shooting extended "across the United States and all across the world." Paddock is known to have traveled widely international, including booking cruises to Europe and the Middle East. Rouse was appointed Special Agent-in-Charge for Las Vegas in 2016 by then-FBI director James Comey. His previous job was section chief in the Counterintelligence Division at FBI Headquarters. Prior to that he served in the Tampa and San Antonio Divisions. In what may represent a first, Rouse announced that the FBI, Las Vegas Police, and Clear Channel Outdoors, a subsidiary of the right-wing iHeartMedia, Inc., were partnering in a Las Vegas area billboard information campaign to encourage people to contact the FBI if they have information on Paddock or anyone else with knowledge of the shooting. Borrowing from the Department of Homeland Security's "If you see something, say something" campaign on counter-terrorism, the FBI is spearheading a campaign based on "If you know something, say something,” along with a 1-800-CallFBI tip line.

The FBI did not seem interested in the fact that on the morning of October 2, the morning after the Las Vegas shooting, Nye County Sheriff's deputies arrested wanted violent felon Duane Johnson, who may have been armed, run into Manse Elementary School in Pahrump, Nevada, which is about 62 miles to the west of Las Vegas. Johnson was not apprehended. Nye County Sheriff's deputies also responded to reports of an armed man at both Floyd Elementary and Rosemary Clarke Middle Schools, both also in Pahrump.

In the past few days, Lombardo has apparently been sidelined at joint FBI-Las Vegas Sheriff's Department press conferences by his Undersheriff Kevin McMahill, a graduate of the CIA-connected Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program. McMahill is a graduate of Columbia Southern University, a distance-learning and for-profit institution headquartered in Orange Beach, Alabama. Lombardo's recent absence coincides with a tightening up on law enforcement information provided to the media concerning the mass shooting.There is increasing evidence, based on Paddock's life style, background -- including being a private pilot -- financial wealth, and international travel, that he may have served as an underworld hitman. Two Hollywood movies, "The Mechanic" and "The Accountant," provide main characters -- hit men -- who mirror Paddock's personality and background. Paddock's fascination with numbers and weapons, as well as his previous job as an accountant for a Lockheed subsidiary and the Internal Revenue Service, closely match the persona of the Ben Affleck character, Christian Wolff, in "The Accountant." [pictured right].

Las Vegas is the capital city of contract hits. Adding credibility to the Paddock-as-a-professional-hitman theory is Lombardo's stated belief that Paddock [pictured left] intended to survive the aftermath of the shooting. Paddock may have had a specific target in the concert crowd but some other party may have altered the scenario from a single hit to a mass shooting. Paddock appears to have specialized in sniper hits into large crowds at long ranges and from tall structures as evidenced by his interest in renting hotel rooms overlooking Chicago's Grant Park during a major music festival there in the summer of 2016 and Boston's Fenway Park, another popular venue for concerts.

Within the past decade, there have been over a half-dozen criminal cases involving Las Vegas-based hitmen. In July of this year, Thomas Randolph, 62, was convicted of hiring a Vegas hitman, Michael James Miller, to kill his wife. After Miller murdered Sharon Causse, Randolph's sixth wife, Randolph shot Miller to death. Randolph was convicted of a double homicide and sentenced to death. In 2012, Noel Stevens, a Vegas hitman, who went by the name "Greyhound," murdered Shauna Tiaffay, the estranged wife of a Las Vegas firefighter. The firefighter, George Tiaffay, paid Stevens $600 to club his wife to death with a hammer.

In 2004, Las Vegas habitué and hitman Ronald Bruce Bigger stabbed Tucson, Arizona physician Dr. David Brian Stidham. Bigger was paid $10,000 by Stidham's medical partner, Dr. Bradley Schwartz. The case is germane to Paddock because Bigger was diagnosed by an Arizona forensic psychologist as suffering from a personality disorder with narcissistic and antisocial features. Paddock has been described in very similar terms.

In 2009, Wen Jun Li was stabbed and slashed 32 times by Taiwanese United Bamboo gang martial arts hitman Xiao Ye Bai for failing to pay back $10,000 in gambling debts. The attack occurred a few blocks west of the Strip at the KTV karaoke bar.

Contract hits have become so common in Las Vegas that the Las Vegas police run undercover officers posing as hitmen who are contacted by individuals trying to arrange murders-for-hire. In 2012, Jorge Velasquez of Las Vegas paid one such undercover officer $2000 to murder his wife as his 32nd birthday present.

Chicago hitman Frank Cullotta worked for Chicago mobster Lefty Rosenthal, a numbers man who ran the mob's casino "skim" of the gross house take at the Stardust Casino. Cullotta is now a featured speaker at Oscar Goodman's pet project, the Mob Museum. Cullotta joined the Federal Witness Protection Program after rolling on the mob.

Las Vegas, which continues its reputation as a "mobbed up" city, may never truly solve the Paddock case. If Paddock was, in fact, a professional hitman, other cans of worms may be opened that the "city fathers" may very well want to keep closed.